[Avodah] Gishmaychem

Liron Kopinsky liron.kopinsky at gmail.com
Thu May 24 22:17:34 PDT 2012


On 23/05/2012 11:20 AM, shalomyitz at comcast.net wrote:

>
> In the beginning of Parasha Behuchosai (26:4): "V'natati gishmaychem
> b'itam..."
> What does it mean to say "YOUR rain"?


On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 10:03 PM, Zev Sero <zev at sero.name> wrote:

> Go to Rashi's main source, Toras Cohanim:
>
> Your rain, and not the rain of other countries.  So how can I maintain
> "And all the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your
> seed"?  That there will be satiety in Eretz Yisrael and famine in all
> the other countries, and they will come and buy from you and enrich you
> with money, in the same way as it is said "And Yosef collected all the
> money that was to be found in Egypt and Cenaan through the food that they
> bought", and so it says "and as your days shall be your excretion", that
> all the countries shall excrete gold and bring it to Eretz Yisrael.


It's hard to imagine that Israel could really produce enough food to
satiate all other countries today (providing food for Canaan is not the
same as providing for China), but maybe this prompts a new understanding of
what Gishmaychem means. With Israel increasingly seen as a world leader in
technology in general, as well as farming agriculture in drip-irrigation
etc. in particular, Gishmaychem could mean more literally *your* geshem, as
in the technology *you* develop will hit the market at the right time and
through that "all the families of the earth will be blessed."

Kol Tuv,
Liron
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